<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>these inchoate desires by azazelsocks</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22359445">these inchoate desires</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/azazelsocks/pseuds/azazelsocks'>azazelsocks</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>kinkmeme fills [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blasphemy, Bottom Sam Winchester, Coercion, Collared Sam Winchester, Collars, Confessional Sex, Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, M/M, Mind Control, Non-Human Castiel (Supernatural), Punishment, Self-Harm, Suicidal Sam Winchester, Top Castiel (Supernatural)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 09:41:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,272</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22359445</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/azazelsocks/pseuds/azazelsocks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="https://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/10656.html?thread=3630240">this spnkinkmeme prompt</a>: <em>Sam doesn’t trust himself to resist Lucifer, so they “arrange” for Castiel to have absolute control over him—Sam can’t disobey Castiel’s orders, or maybe he can’t do anything without Castiel’s permission. After the bond is forged, Cas can feel Sam’s hidden desires to be dominated, humiliated, punished, etc.—and he is happy to fulfill those needs. Dub-con, I guess, since Sam doesn’t actually consent/can’t say no/wouldn’t do it if he had a say in it, but it’s really something that, deep down, he desires.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>kinkmeme fills [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1216674</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>83</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Supernatural Kink Meme</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>these inchoate desires</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>found a bunch of disconnected scenes from this in my drafts from forever ago and I really liked whatever the hell I was doing with Cas, so I knitted it into something cohesive and gave it a quick polish while I try to figure out what is happening with <em><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/14763662">Nail</a></em>. <strong>Mind the self-harm tags and the suicidal!sam tags.</strong></p><p>The consent here is more or less as anon prompted, where Sam really deep down desires and enjoys this kind of relationship dynamic, but I went for a darker Castiel and a more serious power imbalance/coercive element than was perhaps implied in the prompt, so uh, be careful I guess.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>It was, perhaps, not entirely fair. Castiel had come upon the man in a moment of despair and weakness, fear of Lucifer driving him to madness. And Castiel</em><em>—Castiel had seen the opportunity, and he had taken it.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>He finds Sam inside a bar. It is hours past midnight, and the younger Winchester is the only one left in the building. Castiel traces his way through the establishment on foot, seeing fingerprints on shot glasses left in the bar sink, spills of whiskey on the unmopped floor, sweat on tables and the edges of bar stools. It is coated with the clumsy grime of humanity common to all such places, and yet rather than attempt to ignore it, this time Castiel takes the information in. As if perhaps it will give him some clue as to what has been going through Sam Winchester’s head for the past weeks.</p><p>Sam is in the bathroom. Castiel appears silently in the doorway, and Sam does not notice him, preoccupied. Red smears on the edges of the sink, bony elbows braced precariously on damp countertop. Sam is injured.</p><p>Castiel tilts his head curiously. The regular, parallel cuts on Sam’s left wrist are not a kind caused by any monster he has heard of, nor are they consistent with the types of injuries he would acquire fighting humans. There is a razor blade clutched in Sam’s fingers, and Castiel considers the prayer Sam had made only minutes previously, desperation like a beacon. The prayer that had finally led him to follow up on the lead he had obtained from two hunters who claimed to have encountered Sam in this bar. Castiel must come to one conclusion: Sam has done this damage to himself.</p><p>It is then, finally, that Sam notices him and startles badly, knocking his elbows into the sink. His grip on the razorblade slips, knifing into the pads of his fingers. Sam cries out and drops the blade, distracted from Castiel by this fresh injury.</p><p>Castiel crosses the room in two strides and grabs hold of Sam’s wrist. A pulse of grace, and Sam’s fingers and wrist knit back together.</p><p>They stand like that for a minute, Sam breathing hard and Castiel impassive, before Sam tears his hand free and backs up a step. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>“I heard your prayer.” An easy question. So often the Winchesters ask unanswerable ones. It pleases Castiel to be able to reply to this one so simply.</p><p>“I didn’t pray—I didn’t pray to <em>you</em>.”</p><p>Castiel does not move. He thinks later that perhaps a human would have shrugged. “Regardless, I heard your prayer, and I have come. You were in the process of hurting yourself.”</p><p>Sam laughs harshly and fishes his razorblade out of the sink, dropping it in the bathroom sharps container. He pulls a pack of antiseptic wipes from his back pocket and sets to work cleaning the counter of his blood.</p><p>Sensing that he isn’t going to get a reply, Castiel moves closer to Sam again. This is a violation of Dean’s personal space rule, but Sam is not Dean, and Castiel has found the action to be effective in eliciting response from humans. Sam freezes but doesn’t speak. Castiel takes the antiseptic wipe from him. Atomizes it and the evidence of Sam’s actions with a thought.</p><p>Sam stands with his hands hanging loosely at his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He was distracting himself with the cleaning, then. Castiel has observed this behavior from humans many times. They seem to think that busywork is an effective avoidance technique. It is a poor excuse, especially when an angel can do things like this so quickly for them, forcing them to face the conversation again.</p><p>“Why were you harming yourself?”</p><p>Sam huffs. “I thought you heard me praying.”</p><p><em>Please, God, I can</em><em>’t do this. Please, please let it end.</em> Castiel cocks his head. “If your intent was to kill yourself, there are many more efficient and painless ways to do so. The gun you keep in your duffel bag, for instance.”</p><p>“I wasn’t—” Sam glances at the sharps bin, then shakes his head. “I can’t kill myself.” It comes out harsh, laughing, like it’s a joke that stabs Sam to his core.</p><p>“Can’t you?” Sam Winchester is very strong, but Castiel is fairly sure he remains mortal.</p><p>“You think I haven’t tried? I shot myself in the fucking head, actually, just like you said. Twice. Two <em>separate fucking occasions</em>.”</p><p>His shoulders are hunched and tense. Aggressive. Sam is trying to get Castiel to regret asking by  giving answers as hostilely as possible. Castiel is unfazed by the human’s manner; answers are answers. He will take the information in whatever mood Sam chooses to give it in. Sam’s voice drops, quiet and bitter. “I said I’d die before I said yes, and he said he’d just bring me back.”</p><p>“You have been in contact with Lucifer.”</p><p>Another harsh laugh. Sam runs a hand through his hair, and Castiel notices the grease, the tangles. The signs of neglect. “In my dreams, every fucking night. You know what this means, Cas? You know what this <em>fucking</em> means? I can’t stop him. I can’t fight him. Not even me fucking dying will keep him out!”</p><p>Sam is teetering on a breaking point. Even Castiel with his limited knowledge of humanity can see that. Sam’s despair and fear and exhaustion are as palpable as the biofilms developing on the faucet knobs.</p><p>The emotion fascinates him.</p><p>It has been hard for Castiel, adjusting to living with humans. He does not understand them, and interacting with them is difficult. He struggles to interpret the words and actions of humans and he does not know enough to always respond correctly. Their gestures, the wordless language of embodied flesh, are unnatural to Castiel and his attempts to replicate them are awkward. It makes people uncomfortable and places yet another barrier between them and Castiel. It is one of the most frustrating things he has ever experienced. He can feel how close he is to humans, how much more he has in common with them than angels, and yet he cannot be them. He has chosen to fall, like Anna, to cast off the marble layer and feel and experience as the humans do, but now that he has done it, he finds he does not know what to do with himself.</p><p>Here right now there is something to do, perhaps. Castiel <em>wants</em>. It is an interesting sensation, wanting; the closest thing Castiel experienced to it before was grief. He grieved the absence of their father, the fall of Lucifer, the disappearance of Anna, and in grief was always a kernel of desire for the way things used to be.</p><p>But Castiel is not grieving now. He has lost nothing. He only stands to gain.</p><p>What would a human do?</p><p>They would act on their desires.</p><p>“There are solutions,” he says, and watches for Sam’s response.</p><p>Naked, shuddering hope flashes across the Hunter’s face, before it is shut down, cynicism and distrust guarding Sam’s expression. “No offense, Cas, but you're not exactly a match for an archangel.”</p><p>“I have been thinking about free will,” Castiel says. “Angels don't care for it much. In our experiences, the exercise of free will is as often as not, the spiritual death or disappearance of one of our siblings. The Garrisons feel that free will is the source of much loss and evil in our family. Yet it is very important to humans. I wondered why. Other humans exercising their free will frequently has far more heinous results than anything angels do. It then occurred to me how vulnerable your freedom is. Perhaps it is illogical, but it is understandable to value something that is so rare and easily lost.”</p><p>“Thanks, Cas,” Sam said dully. “It’s so nice to hear about how easy it would be for Lucifer to make me into a puppet. Really encouraging.”</p><p>“That is not what I meant,” Castiel snapped, the flippant pessimism of Sam’s response angering him, and then controlled himself. “You are afraid that because you have the freedom to choose, you will be weak. You will make the wrong choice.”</p><p>Sam neither confirms nor denies. Castiel senses the pain radiating from him anyways, and draws a step closer.</p><p>“What if you were not free to choose?”</p>
<hr/><p>They perform the spell later that night, though truthfully it is nearly morning by the time Castiel has collected his ingredients. He finished cleaning the bar for Sam with a small exertion of grace, and took Sam to the forested park on the outskirts of town. Among the trees is a suitably secluded place for Castiel to perform magic without alerting too much undue attention.It is a simple piece of witchcraft, a spell of compulsion. The spell will bind Sam to Castiel, body and soul, and like most of its type, it will compel Sam to obey any order given by Castiel. The framework of compulsion, however, easily allows for certain failsafes to be built into the magic: it will also compel Sam not to perform any act that he believes would lead to grievous or fatal harm to his person, including possession.</p><p>Though privately Castiel thinks that Lucifer values his vessel enough to preserve Sam’s mind, it is clear that Sam wholeheartedly believes that Lucifer possessing him would be a kind of death. And perhaps so. Castiel does not comment either way.</p><p>The little fire in the clearing crackles, the smell of burning herbs pungent. Castiel murmurs the last syllables of the incantation, and walks around the fire to Sam’s prone form. The magic will rearrange Sam’s mind; Castiel knocked him unconscious before they began as a kindness. He pulls the collar from his trenchcoat and wraps it around Sam’s neck, the focal point of the magic. It is a simple object, only an unadorned band of leather, but as soon as the buckle closes and Castiel mutters the final phrase to fix the spell, it is sealed in place. Sam’s head will come off before anyone is able to remove it.</p><p>Unaware, Sam misses how the leather flares light enough to blind even Castiel as the spell locks into place. He misses the second where Castiel’s fingers are still at his throat and the magic clicks into alignment and their pulses beat as one.</p><p>Castiel wakes him with a touch of Grace, and Sam comes awake panicked and disoriented. Castiel almost staggers as consciousness returns to Sam and the spell truly comes to life.</p><p>A surge of sensation pours in from the man lying in front of him. Physical sensations: the steady thump of his heart a beat behind Jimmy’s, the shallowness of his breathing as he tries to process what was happening, the roughness of the forest floor under his body.</p><p>But more than that, a flood of emotional feedback from Sam: shock, apprehension, fear, resignation—and there, underneath the immediate reaction to the spell becoming final, relief. The interlocking of Sam’s soul with his grace provides him a direct conduit between himself and Sam’s emotions, a clarity of empathic resonance where there was only vagueness before.</p><p>“Cas?” Sam whispers, propping himself up on his arms.</p><p>“Stand up,” Castiel replies.</p><p>Sam does at once, brushing pine needles from his jeans as he goes, and Castiel catches the flicker of surprise from him, a sharp pang of emotion that Castiel can’t quite recognize. (He expects that this arrangement will make him significantly more adept at observing and interpreting human emotions.) The speed of the reaction and the feelings he’s receiving from Sam are fairly convincing to him that the spell has taken properly, but Sam might still be uncompelled. Standing in the presence of angels is normal behavior for Sam; he does it partly out of respect, and partly because standing, he is better prepared for a fight.</p><p> A fight that he will lose, of course, but Castiel admires his tenacity.</p><p>“Take your jacket off,” he says, circling around Sam. Sam’s apprehension tells him that he is coming off as predatory, and he finds that he enjoys that. “Don’t turn around.”</p><p>Sam moves jerkily, like he isn’t quite sure what he’s doing, fingers yanking on buttons and shoving awkwardly at fabric. He is fighting the spell, and it is utterly ineffective.</p><p>Castiel can feel his anger and confusion, distress and powerlessness, and then—oh.</p><p>He feels the moment of surrender, when Sam forces himself to remember that this is Castiel and Castiel is friendly. Sam’s purposefully slowed, meditative breathing. The effort it takes him to relax the tension of his back muscles. The moment when Sam submits himself entirely to Castiel.</p><p>The jacket falls to the ground and Sam stands still.</p><p>Oh, it is beautiful. The waterfall of emotions from Sam, the rush of Sam’s internal struggle and resignation—Castiel is thrilled. This is what he was searching for, is what he wanted to demonstrate and explore. For the first time since taking the borrowed body, Castiel feels something from the genitals of his host. Ruthlessly he quashes the physical reaction, but he basks in the mental feeling of desire.</p><p>He bends to retrieve Sam’s jacket and hands it back to him. “The spell is functional,” he says. “I apologize—I had to test it to be sure.”</p><p>Sam accepts the jacket uncertainly, but doesn’t put it back on; it hangs in his hands, limp. He is feeling <em>something</em>. Castiel can’t interpret it. “I—” He shakes his head. “Yeah, no, it’s fine, Cas. He’s—he can’t get to me anymore?”</p><p>“He may still have the ability to appear in your dreams,” Castiel cautions. “But you are no longer capable of consenting to possession by an angel, whatever else he may attempt to do to you.”</p><p>The relief again, tempered somewhat—Sam does not fully believe Castiel, and Castiel suspects he will not until he speaks to Lucifer again himself. When no immediate response is forthcoming from Sam, Castiel fills the silence. “I must return to Dean,” he says. “We have a lead on the Colt and he instructed me to come to him this morning.”</p><p>Sam’s face falls almost imperceptibly at the mention of Dean, made more obvious by the flare of complicated emotions in his chest. Longing, first and foremost… and—envy? Jealousy?</p><p>“Yeah. You should go. Good luck, Cas.” He smiles, wan but genuine.</p><p>“Would you like me to return you to the place you are staying, first?” Castiel asks.</p><p>Sam nods, and Castiel reaches out to touch his shoulder. He drops Sam next to the bed in his motel room, and is gone before the human has time to perceive the change in location.</p>
<hr/><p>The confines of the spell are simple, as Castiel laid them out to him before they began that night. Anything Castiel orders, Sam must perform to the best of his ability. Anything Castiel asks, Sam must answer honestly. That one is the quickest to find a loophole in—the requirement of honesty only targets lies of commission. If Sam leaves information out, the spell doesn’t care. Otherwise, Sam can do anything he wants, until Castiel tells him he isn’t allowed. Then only a second, negatory command from Castiel will free him. Baked into the spell is a self-preservation requirement; as long as he is bound to Castiel, Sam cannot purposefully put himself in harm’s way. Including saying <em>yes</em> to an archangel bent on destroying the world.</p><p>Sam is grateful. He really is. It feels like a weight has lifted off his shoulders, a poison drained from his sleep. Lucifer appears in his dream the first night after the spell is cast, but as soon as Sam sat up from his bed to reveal the collar, the archangel’s face darkened and Lucifer turned on his heel and disappeared. Sam hasn’t seen him since.</p><p>It’s incredibly comforting, both because Sam can now sleep for more than an hour at a time and because Sam <em>can</em><em>’t fuck this up</em>. Fucking up is like a constant of Sam’s life—everything big he’s attempted to do has ended in failure, sometimes failure with incredibly far-reaching consequences he never could have anticipated, including starting the fucking apocalypse. But this, this one thing, he is physically incapable of failing at. The freedom of not having to be responsible for preventing Lucifer from wreaking havoc on Earth…it feels like something in his chest has finally untwisted.</p><p>The collar, on the other hand, he is…less fine with. Castiel said before they started that no human would be able to see it, though angels and other supernatural creatures would, which is comforting in some ways and unhelpful in others. Invisible though it may be, he can feel its weight around his neck, and he reaches up for it constantly, tugging and fiddling with it becoming a subconscious habit that his hands return to whenever he’s not paying attention.</p><p>Lindsey hasn’t been able to look him in the eye since a pair of hunters dragged her into the bar at knifepoint; their coworkers don’t know exactly what happened between them, but are more willing to stand with Lindsey than the giant and suspiciously anonymous drifter. Things have been awkward at best. When Sam starts constantly pawing at his own neck for no evident reason, his coworkers’ attitudes go from awkward to icy cold.</p><p>He wishes he could say it didn’t bother him—after all, he’s been keeping himself purposefully aloof from them the whole time he’s worked here—but he’s the one who asked Bobby to send Steve to his death and he’s the reason Lindsey was assaulted and watched him almost kill two men. The frozen reception he’s getting from his coworkers is a constant reminder that Sam fucked up, again.</p><p>And there is the other issue: Sam’s craven desire for retribution. Not against anyone else, but against himself—penance, absolution. Atonement for his past crimes.</p><p>He’s never really told anyone about his craving for punishment before. He told Jess he was kinky, and she was thrilled to be his Domme, but their scenes were just about playing with control. He hadn’t yet dared to confess to her the depths of self-hatred and his sins—though it was also true that junior year of college, he hadn’t racked quite as many up yet. Once or twice he’s picked up a girl who was willing to handcuff him to the bed and do some impact play, but he’s never had a one night stand who he wanted to explain his issues to in enough detail to get the scene he <em>really</em> wants.</p><p>He’s certainly not going to tell Castiel that every time his Adam’s apple bobs against the collar he craves someone to take their pound of flesh so they can cradle him afterwards and say, <em>all is forgiven</em>, give him proof that he can drop the weight of one more unpaid failure.</p><p>These feelings barely make sense to Sam. They’re definitely not going to make sense to Cas, who still has trouble with idioms. And that was if Sam wanted Cas to be his Dom, which…he trusts Cas, sure, but they aren’t that close, exactly.</p><p>It <em>would</em> be something to confess to an actual angel of God, on his way to Falling or not, but—but Sam is an “abomination,” after all, and he’s never seen any evidence that Cas is interested in sex at all.</p><p>Sam turns back to loading pint glasses into the sterilizer and puts the thoughts out of his head.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>